Comments on: Stockwell on CSIRO Drought Reporthttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/
by Steve McIntyreSun, 02 Aug 2015 19:00:38 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Ian Castleshttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157843
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:10:40 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157843On 5 August Steve McI opened this thread with a link to David Stockwell’s analysis of the CSIRO Drought Report, and expressed the view that key claims in that report ‘do not pass obvious statistical tests for “significance”‘. Steve urged CA readers to ‘Please visit David at his blog.’

I don’t want to get in the road of the spirited discussion of a later analysis by David Stockwell that’s taking place on the ‘Koutsoyiannis et al 2008: On the credibility of climate predictions’ thread. But CA readers should know that, nearly three weeks after the publication of David’s analysis of the Drought Report, there’s been no response to his paper from any of the 11 authors of that Report – and very little from anyone else.

There was some discussion at ‘Open Mind’ which was triggered by a post in which Lazar said that “This is the first time I am actually angry about … denialists pestering scientists, producing disinformation and setting themselves [up] as auditors in order to sell that disinformation.” After accusing Stockwell of selling “deliberately false information … with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it”, I hope Lazar felt a twinge of embarrassment when David prefaced his reply on his own blog with the comment “Thanks to Lazar for taking the time to provide the following feedback at Open Mind.”

I urge CA experts who have the time to do so to study David Stockwell’s critique of the Drought Report and post their reactions at ‘Niche Modeling’. Meanwhile I’ll post below the text of an email that I sent to 23 Australian statisticians on 7 August. The letter is, I think, self-explanatory, but I do want to stress the importance of this matter. The Australian Minister for Agriculture has made several speeches telling farmers of the dire prospects facing their regions unless urgent action is taken to reduce GHG emissions. If these statements are based on findings that in the view of expert statisticians don’t pass obvious tests for ‘significance’, the farmers are entitled to know this.

[Letter of 7 August from Ian Castles to Selected Australian Statisticians begins]
I am writing to you as Accredited Statisticians who are recognised by the Statistical Society of Australia Inc (SSAI) as having achieved an acceptable level of professional competence in the understanding and application of statistical methods, and who are listed on the SSAI’s website as experts who wish their contact details to be made public. Your email addresses indicate that you are affiliated with the ANU (10), the CSIRO (9) or the ABS (4).

Last Monday, Dr. David Stockwell, author of Niche Modeling and host of the Niche Modeling website, posted an evaluation of the validity of the modeling in the recently-published CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology ‘Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report’ (DECR). This report is available at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/droughtec/ , and Dr. Stockwell’s analysis is published at http://landshape.org/enm/effects-of-global-warming/#more-422 . He has posted his R programming and links to the data sets and invites others to verify the accuracy of his code and to carry out their own analyses of the data.

The conclusion of Dr. Stockwell’s analysis is that all 13 of the models used in the DECR fail standard internal validation tests for regional droughted area in Australia over the last century. If that finding is accepted, there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report.

At the time of writing (Noon on 7 August, which is more than 60 hours after the posting of Stockwell’s evaluation and invitation) there has been NO response to that invitation. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has there been any reference to this matter in the mainstream media – even in newspapers that reported the original findings under headlines such as ‘Climate change study like disaster novel …’ (The Age, Melbourne) or ‘Climate change report like a disaster novel, says Australian Minister’ (The Guardian, London). There have been several reports on blogs: Andrew Bolt of the Herald-Sun (Melbourne) made a posting ‘Dud studies behind Rudd’s freakish claims’ and attracted over 150 responses within 24 hours, and there have been posts on Climate Audit (‘Stockwell on CSIRO drought report’) and on the website of trade and public policy analyst Peter Gallagher (‘CSIRO’s drought model “fails”’).

I know that you are all busy people, but I hope that at least some you can find the time to examine David Stockwell’s analysis and to post your assessment at Niche Modeling.

The Government has already made important decisions on the basis of the CSIRO/BoM report: for example, the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, announced on 7 July that ‘What we’ve decided today, in the light of the information we received yesterday, is to more than triple the $15 million commitment to research and development in agriculture.’

Of course the Government might have decided to triple spending on R&D in agriculture anyway – the case for doing so doesn’t stand or fall on the CSIRO/BoM findings. But it is still important to know who is right: David Stockwell or Australia’s leading climate science research institutions. In speeches around the country (e.g., the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association on 17 July and the NSW Farmers and Graziers Association on 31 July) the Minister for Agriculture is ‘selling’ the CSIRO/BoM findings, including the dire predictions for individual regions, as ‘the best science available’.

I have pasted below, for your personal information, an article that I’m expecting to be published tomorrow in the e-journal ‘Online Opinion’. I understand that it is to carry the apt title ‘Scientists, Politicians and Public Policy.’ For statisticians (including official statisticians as well as those in academia, CSIRO and the private sector) it should be seen as a serious matter that the Government has accepted without question a report that does not meet ‘an acceptable level of professional competence in the understanding and application of statistical methods.’ Please note the reference in my last paragraph to the Accredited Statisticians list maintained by the SSAI.
[Letter of 7 August from Ian Castles to Selected Australian Statisticians ends]

The $46.2 million fund will deal with reducing greenhouse pollution, better soil management and adapting to a changing climate. Under reducing greenhouse pollution, the money provides an opportunity to look at ways – whether it be through nitrous oxide with cropping or methane gases in livestock production – of reducing an emissions profile in agriculture, without reducing production.

Yep, still no hits on Stockwell drought at Google or at Yahoo news either. But regular Google and Yahoo search turn up plenty of references. I suspect most people dont’ search just at news.google.com. In fact, I rarely go there for news, since their indexing engine for the web picks up changes so quickly. Most of the news ends up in regular google, if not all.

]]>By: Ian Castleshttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157839
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:24:28 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157839On 7 July the Australian Minister for Agriculture announced that ‘What we’ve decided today, in the light of the information we received yesterday [in the CSIRO/BoM report] is to more than triple the $15 million commitment to research and development in agriculture.’ Of course the Government might have decided to triple spending on R&D in agriculture anyway: the case for doing so doesn’t stand or fall on the CSIRO/BoM findings. But if David Stockwell is right that there’s no credible basis for those findings, the expenditure may well be misdirected.
]]>By: Sam Urbintohttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157838
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:13:04 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157838When making decisions based upon incomplete information, the best information available (or actually, the least worst information available) should be used to make intelligent decsions based upon some sort of logical risk/reward cost/benefit analysis; do I spend 20 billion to sequester carbon dioxide, or do I spend it on shorelines, famine, disease, etc. How much more study of the issues is needed? Should I focus R&D on this, or that? Or not do R&D but use resources on solving issue X or Y? This isn’t about anything other than checking the information behind the conclusions so as to make these types of decisions; which is difficult to do when the information isn’t available.
]]>By: Joe Soltershttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157837
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:47:24 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157837Re: 15 When should ‘engineering’ enter the AGW arena? Quick answer. Assuming ‘engineering’ means proving a theory by using actual engineering concepts, real data, and thorough checks, then this stage must be completed before any climate theories are used to support significant public policy recommendations. In a few years, engineers, statisticians et cet will start closing the technical loop on climate science, and then , perhaps public policy issues can be addressed. Clearly, not today.
]]>By: David Stockwellhttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157836
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:39:27 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157836I don’t think its fair to single out CSIRO. You need to identify the enemy — IMO bias and pseudoscience. There are targets for review everywhere. The public face of science has shifted from atom splitters to GHG accounting.
]]>By: jaehttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157835
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:09:47 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157835jcspe: You can bring this matter up at the Message Board, if you want to hear from the Peanut Gallery. It is ironic that there are several fairly in-depth analyses by physicists that show no significant effects of CO2, but evidently none that show the opposite.
]]>By: trevorhttp://climateaudit.org/2008/08/05/stockwell-on-csiro-drought-report/#comment-157834
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:06:49 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3392#comment-157834Andrew Bolt has covered the story at his blog here: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dud_studies_behind_rudds_freakish_claims/